Does It Take More Than One Village? The Effect of Inter-Municipal Cooperation on Waste Separation

Germà Bel and Joël Bühler ()
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Joël Bühler: GiM-IREA, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain.

No 202501, IREA Working Papers from University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics

Abstract: Municipalities increasingly cooperate with one another to improve their public services. In this study, we estimate the causal effect of Inter-Municipal Cooperation (IMC) on the environmental performance of waste collection in Catalonia. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we find that municipalities moving into IMC decrease non-separated waste per capita and increase the share of waste separation. However, when taking into account potential selection into treatment, a causal effect is present only in a sub-period after a strong hike in the landfill tax, and particularly for municipalities switching after this tax hike. This points to IMC’s potential to use technical capability and economies of scale for a more pronounced and rapid reaction, enhancing the effectiveness of higher-level policy. In contrast, absent the landfill tax, IMC seems to have offered limited improvement in environmental performance, suggesting at most a secondary role for internalization of local environmental spillovers.

Keywords: Inter-Municipal Cooperation; Waste Management; Recycling; Selection into Treatment; Difference-in-Differences. JEL classification: H41, H77, Q53. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51 pages
Date: 2025-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env and nep-eur
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ira:wpaper:202501

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